School Profile

There is high evidence of higher student achievement at William Ford School as indicated by the students’ academic growth, the quality of instruction and the higher involvement of parents’ participation in their child’s learning.

Current MEAP 2013 scores, SRI, DRA and STAR MATH data shows a notable overall increase in students’ growth in reading, writing and math. William Ford students are scoring better and moving up on the proficiency ladder no matter what data you look at.

This high success is a result of many initiatives that we started at WF since the fall of 2012.
Focus and consistency in professional development for teachers has been geared to improve classroom instruction in reading, writing and math. A coaching model has also been fully implemented across the grade levels where literacy coaches and resource teachers push in all classrooms to model for and to co teach with teachers. In addition, classroom teachers were given built in shared prep time and additional time outside of school hours to meet, collaborate and work on their grade level curriculum.; Thus, highly efficient and professional teams emerged.

The RTI model at WF is a very effective process geared towards identifying each and every student not performing at grade level and designing and implementing interventions that attend to his or her needs. This program is monitored closely and adjusted as needed. We have seen a good number of students making significant gains and are no longer flagged for retention.

We have also initiated many student programs that promote positive conduct such as the PBIS and WHY TRY, STAND, and we continue to have other programs which promote academic achievement such as; Quarterly Honor Roll Assemblies to reward high achievement and high effort and to encourage students to put forth their best efforts. To support our very large ELL population, we have provided tutoring programs before and after school, summer schools and we continue to work closely with ACCESS and provide the 21st Century program after school as well.

We know that parents are a very important factor in student success, so we have had in place very strong parent education and support programs such as training parents on helping students with literacy and math, on technology use, on health and nutrition, etc.

When walking in our hallways or visiting classrooms, it is very obvious how much collaboration, communication and research based common instructional practice is taking place at WF.